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Yahoo Unveils Mail, Weather Apps as Mobile Users Grow

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc. unveiled applications
for checking e-mail on tablet computers and tracking weather
forecasts on smartphones, as the largest U.S. Internet portal
seeks to bring more users of its Web services to mobile devices.

Yahoo Mail for iPads and Yahoo Weather for iPhones will be
available via Apple Inc.’s App Store starting today, the
Sunnyvale, California-based company said in a blog post. A mail
program for tablets running Google Inc.’s Android mobile-operating system is also available from today.

Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is investing in
mobile software as she attempts to restore growth to the
struggling Internet pioneer. Already, improvements to its apps
such as Flickr helped the company top 300 million monthly mobile
users, up from just 200 million at the end of the last year,
said Lee Parry, senior director for mobile and emerging products
at Yahoo.

“That number, a lot of that has come with the fact that
Marissa has a laser focus on the user,” Parry said in an
interview. Mayer aims to take Yahoo’s existing audience and
“turn them into habitual users of our products and services,”
he said.

The e-mail apps, Yahoo’s first for tablets, encourage users
to perform a “triage” of their inbox by swiping messages into
groups organized by sender. The weather program features photos
taken by Flickr users, linked to the location and time of day.

Mayer’s Turnaround

An updated version of Flickr, released in December, has
enticed users to upload 50 percent more photos, Parry said.
Revamped mail apps for mobile phones released the same month
resulted in a 50 percent increase in daily users, he said.

Mayer’s turnaround efforts faced setbacks this week, after
the company issued a second-quarter sales forecast that may fall
short of analyst estimates. Revenue in the current quarter,
excluding money passed to partner sites, will be as much as
$1.09 billion. Analysts on average had projected revenue of
$1.11 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Yahoo’s shares fell 1.9 percent to $23.26 at the close in
New York. The stock has advanced 17 percent this year, compared
with an 8.1 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.